Gratitude
by Lady Razorsharp
Summary: In which Watson and Holmes are reminded that there is less to mourn and much to celebrate...


AN: Inspired by the Granada Production of "The Dancing Men" starring Jeremy Brett and David Burke.

For my Mom, the best Watson any Sherlock ever had.

Gratitude

By The Lady Razorsharp

_  
Before you were conceived I wanted you  
Before you were born I loved you  
Before you were here an hour I would die for you  
This is the miracle of life. --_Maureen Hawkins

My long association with Sherlock Holmes was, at times, one of waiting.

Expectancy of the next adventure to come, of the next time I would roll over in my bed to see him standing over me, his frame quivering with captive energy and his eyes burning darkly with anticipation for the game newly afoot—this ruled many of my pre-dawn hours during our years at Baker Street.

More often there was what Holmes called the bulk of a detective's job—hours of endless waiting for the appearance of a particular individual on a lonely street, or of concealing oneself in a cramped corner, listening to the paint peel in some deserted, derelict building. Cold, hungry, endlessly weary; these were the days and nights that dragged on to eternity—yet all was forgotten the instant he touched my arm and whispered, "Come, Watson!" With my revolver in my hand and my heart pounding, all the weary waiting felt as if it had been but a moment. Then as we confronted the villain and delivered them to justice, we were drunk on adrenaline, giddy with release.

Then there was the waiting I did not care to do—waiting for Holmes to rouse himself from the black depressions that followed the heady rush of solving the unsolvable. There was a dreadful anticipation then, of the mornings that I would knock on his door and he would not answer, too far gone into narcotic dreams to hear anything of the outside world. In that darkness loomed the thing I feared most of all—to discover him lying cold and silent, the spark of brilliance that the world knew as Sherlock Holmes having been extinguished forever by his own weary hand.

He always dragged himself back from the edge of the abyss just in time, emerging from his room haggard and worn and much too thin. It was a ritual of sorts: I would look up from my paper, he would sit opposite me at the table, our eyes would meet, and he would nod No words were ever needed, a fact for which we were both grateful.

Given my chosen profession, I suppose it was only natural to relate these times of waiting to common events, such as waiting for the birth of a child, or keeping vigil over a dying man. I felt such experiences made me a more sympathetic physician, and a greater gift no one could have asked for.

I gained a new appreciation for my own mother—she who had borne four and buried two before bringing me into the world—and how she must have counted the days with growing impatience until she should be delivered. It always amazed me how a woman, screaming curses and begging God for her life mere moments before, cried tears of joy, her pain forgotten when I placed the wriggling bundle of her child in her arms.

In just the same way, I could never fail to be moved when a wasted form cast their feverish gaze on me, looking for eternity in my eyes, and I would wait with them until their last breath heralded blessed release from the torments of this world.

When I would come home to Baker Street on such nights, Holmes would look up from his chemistry and see the foolish tears I had tried to hide, and repeat his nod of understanding. Without a word, he would go to his violin case and I to my bed, and I would lie awake until the music faded from the sitting room.

It was some months after Holmes unraveled the mystery of what I later titled 'The Dancing Men'—those child's drawings that terrified a woman nearly to death—that Holmes and I were spending a pleasant morning reading through the mail and perusing the news of the day. Mrs. Hudson had once again outdone herself, trying as she usually did to tempt Holmes' appetite with bits of this and that, and for once, Holmes seemed to warm to the occasion. I enjoyed Mrs. Hudson's cooking on any day and twice on Sundays (sometimes literally), but while Holmes knew the difference between good and bad cuisine, it was usually all the same to him, no more than petrol in an engine.

He was in the middle of a plate of griddlecakes (Mrs. Hudson had recently gotten some recipes from an American magazine and was using us as her test subjects) when he fixed his attention on a particular envelope. Grabbing up the tongs from the sugar bowl, he used them to tease out the paper from the tottering pile of mail. For the moment, he ignored the pleas for help postmarked from Cairo, Rio, and Tokyo, ignored the advertisements and the bills, as well as any number of envelopes addressed in flowery, girlish hands. He rose from the table and retrieved the ivory-handled dagger from the mantle, using the wickedly sharp knife to open the letter as I wiped maple treacle from my chin.

"Mmm? What's that, Holmes?" I said thickly, chasing the words with a swallow of tea.

"From Mycroft," he replied absently, gray eyes already scanning halfway down the page.

"Ah," I said, not knowing what else to say.

Mycroft Holmes, the older of the two brothers, was a decent fellow if not altogether the friendliest chap in the world. What he lacked in warmth he made up for in spades with his connections to the nerve centers of world government, connections that had more than once proved invaluable to his younger brother. He alone called Holmes 'Sherlock', which always renewed my wonder at their parents' decision to name their children so oddly. However, I heard somewhere—not from Holmes—that Holmes Sr. was himself named 'Sherringford', so I could understand the tendency. The very few times he had mentioned his sire, Holmes had always done so with almost a sarcastic tone; I gathered that their relationship had been a strained one.

Holmes had mentioned his mother only once in our years together, early on when we were still just two young bucks getting acquainted. One morning I knocked on Holmes' door to find him hanging a picture on his wall—that of a lovely woman in a wedding dress, her dark hair hanging in heavy shining ringlets all down her back. Those same eyes I saw every day over the breakfast table stared back at me from the sepia-toned daguerreotype, and I remarked how there was indeed no mistaking the family resemblance between them. The cold fury in Holmes' face gave me serious pause, and I hastily made my exit, apologizing for having disturbed him at such a private moment. Later, Holmes asked my forgiveness for his behavior, and said that yes, there was a great deal of resemblance between them. Her name was Juliette, he said, and the sadness in those three syllables nearly brought tears to my eyes. I never pressed him for details, and he never spoke of her again to me.

The sound of crinkling paper brought me back to the present, and I was just in time to see Holmes fold up the letter and put it back in its envelope, then stuff the envelope in the pocket of his dressing gown. He passed the table, swept into his room and shut the door, leaving the doughy remnants of his breakfast to congeal in its brown, sticky bath. Utterly baffled but somehow not surprised, I helped myself to one of his griddlecakes and proceeded to wait him out.

Shortly thereafter, Mrs. Hudson came to collect the dishes. I praised her flair for frontier fare, but the disappointed look at the sight of Holmes' half-full plate never entirely faded from her normally genial features. After she had gone, I settled in at my writing desk near the window to put some finishing touches on the story I would soon send to the Strand Magazine office, and had just dipped my pen when Holmes' door opened. I was relieved to see him dressed smartly for town. I always thought we cut a couple of dashing figures, and it didn't take extraordinary deductive powers to see the appreciative glances quickly hidden behind lacy parasols. Holmes never noticed such things, much to my chagrin, but his clean-shaven chin and brilliantine hair reassured me that he was feeling quite himself despite Mycroft's mysterious summons.

I couldn't resist. "And where are you off to, old fellow?"

"Church," he said tersely, snatching up his silk hat and charcoal-colored greatcoat.

"_What?_" I returned, incredulous. The only time I had ever seen Holmes in a church was when someone had been murdered in one, and I said so. This gained me the same cold stare I had received years before, and for a moment he was a stranger with my friend's face.

With his usual economy of movement, Holmes opened the door, retrieved his silver-topped walking stick from the umbrella stand and pulled his pearl-gray gloves from his coat pocket, which gave me enough time to lay down my pen and rise from my seat.

"Holmes—"

"Good _day_, Watson." He left in a swirl of dark fabric, the sharp _slam!_ of the door serving as the period at the end of his sentence.

I myself was called out on a case later that same day, so it was nearly teatime when I made my way back to Baker Street. I had not been in the house more than two minutes when Holmes strode through the door, looking tired and yet serene. He turned his clear gaze on me and smiled a little sadly, I thought.

"I am always apologizing to you, my dear Watson," he said, removing his hat and shrugging out of his coat. "And so today must be added to my mountainous debt."

"Nonsense, old fellow," I replied, hanging up my own coat. "From the way you tore out of here this morning, I knew it must have been important."

He nodded, his eyes on the hat in his hands. "It was indeed."

I thought the matter closed, but after his cup of strong tea he settled back with his usual noxious blend of tobacco and began to puff thoughtfully on his pipe. I was drowsing over my manuscript in the last golden rays of afternoon when his voice brought me back to wakefulness.

"You know, Watson, I wasn't going to tell you anything about today." Now his smile was genuine. "After coming back here, to this familiar place…" he raised his head to glance at the walls and the tangible record of his life. "When I saw you here just as you always have been…I decided that I _would_ tell you."

Many would have been impatient with Holmes' circumspection, but I had learned to watch him closely, for his words were only half of what he said. "As always, I'm honoured to be in your confidence."

He removed the pipe from between his teeth and smiled the same sad smile I had seen before. "This morning, Mycroft was good enough to remind me that our mother has been dead for exactly twenty years, today."

"Oh, Holmes, I'm so sorry," I frowned. "I hope you'll pardon me for saying so, but your brother's got a lot of nerve—"

He held up a hand to stem the flow of my words. "I have endeavoured these many years to forget the exact date, so it was fitting that Mycroft remind me."

"But still, he should have come in person," I said darkly. "It's rather insensitive not to."

Holmes shrugged. "Mycroft is Mycroft is Mycroft, and ever shall be." He replaced the pipe and puffed a yellow-gray cloud. "To him, I am still the wayward young lad in need of looking after, scrambling over mud puddles in my good trousers and billeting tadpoles in his shaving mug."

I grinned; in a way, it was still true. "I am glad, though, that you can honour her memory together, as a family."

He rolled his eyes. "To call my brother and me a 'family' is overestimation in the extreme." He grew pensive then, staring at his interlaced fingers. "I wonder what she would think of both of us, the 'accountant' and the amateur consulting detective."

Despite my friendship with Holmes, I was becoming a bit uncomfortable with the intimacy of this discussion. "No doubt she would think she raised two fine sons," I suggested.

"I was barely fifteen when she died, Watson. No longer a boy…and not quite a man." He shook his head. "Mycroft was already working as a clark for the previous…occupant…of his post, but I was the one who was restless, rootless. I was never satisfied."

"Well, perhaps she would take comfort knowing you were still as she remembered," I teased gently.

He took it well, merely tilting his head in acquiescence. "Perhaps."

We sat in companionable silence until it was interrupted by a knock at the door. "Come," he called, and Mrs. Hudson swept in.

"Postman brought the evening paper for you, Mr. Holmes—and a letter he forgot this morning." She took the envelope from her apron pocket and laid both on the table behind us. "You could do with a bit of supper, I think," she said pointedly. "Both of you've been out all day and I'm sure you're famished."

"Dear Mrs. Hudson," I cried, rising from my chair to kiss her cheek. "You are our capstan, our lodestone, our guiding star. Whatever should we do without you?"

She blushed prettily. "Starve to death, I'm sure," she said, bustling out.

Holmes simply laughed.

A long while and a plateful of good English cooking later (apparently breakfast was the limit of Mrs. Hudson's American experiments thus far), I settled back with the paper and Holmes repeated his letter-slicing ritual. When I looked up, Holmes' expression was utterly unreadable, and I raised my eyebrows at him.

"Holmes?" I asked, concerned.

He merely extended the letter to me, then went to his violin case and began to lovingly tune the gorgeous Stradivarius. When I saw him safely settled on his task, I turned my attention to the letter in my hand.

_15 May_

_Riding Thorpe_

_Norfolk_

_My dear Mr. Holmes_ (it read):

_It is with the utmost gratitude that I write to you today. I feel compelled to share my happiness with you and your friend Dr. Watson, since I would not be here to tell it if it were not for your prompt action on my behalf._

_I feel that my husband is now at peace despite the violent way in which he left this world, and I know it is due to your efforts to see justice done. As for me, I am simply grateful that I am alive and have enough command of my faculties to direct my hand to write these words and my eyes to see them on the page. However, there is one other thing I am most grateful for—the life of my child._

_You see, Mr. Holmes, although my husband was indeed many years older than me, it was still his wish to have a family. When my past threatened to take all of that away, it was you who stepped in and, though no one could have prevented the disaster that removed Hilton from my life, you restored to me the legacy my dear husband all unknowingly left in my care._

_And so it is now that I can write and tell you that I am the happy mother of a beautiful son, whom in hope I have named Hilton John Sherlock Cubitt. I apologize for the presumption, but I do not think your mother will mind. I hope she is very proud of you._

_I remain,_

_Very truly yours,_

_Mrs. Elsie Cubitt_

There was a photograph attached to the letter, and I smiled as I looked into the sleepy face of Master Cubitt.

"I hope you grow into your name ere long, young sir," I murmured. "You could do much worse."

Holmes glanced at me, his bow poised above the strings. We looked at each other for a long moment, and then I dipped my chin once. No words were needed. He closed his eyes and began to coax a bittersweet melody from the violin.

He played for what seemed like hours, but I later realized I had fallen asleep, and heard the music in my dreams.

When I woke, stiff from slumping awkwardly in my chair, the fire was mere cinder and ash. I glanced over to find Holmes sprawled in the chair opposite, the violin and bow laid beside him.

He was fast asleep.

end--


End file.
